


I was kinda getting used to being someone you loved

by nicolewithasoul



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breakup, Breakup Fic, F/F, I still don't really know how to tag, Jukebox, Julie and the phantoms - Freeform, Non-Linear Narrative, Songfic, because they aren't ghosts but it's not really mentioned, i think that i will give you a happy ending as a treat, it's kind of chronological but not??, juke, so i'll tag that, sorry about that, technically AU, that's their ship name right?, the band breaks up, the first bits are very angsty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27509782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicolewithasoul/pseuds/nicolewithasoul
Summary: The breaking of Luke Patterson and Julie Molina.Or the fic that shows the aftermath of heartbreak.*Title from Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi*
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	1. we can't even be in the same room

**Author's Note:**

> Now you may be thinking, Nicole, you've never been in a relationship or been broken up with, why are you writing a breakup fic? That's a good question that I don't have an answer to. This is the first of a three part series that I'm working on. The next part will be Julie. 
> 
> I highly recommend listening to Same Room by JP Saxe when you are reading this. I listened to it on repeat while writing this. If anyone wants the playlist that I so creatively titled "Juke Breakup Fic" it's at this link. [playlist link](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2h941Xn6Bi0neIPReBk6kv?si=o7pGgQomSFWm8orqmdhxvQ)
> 
> This is technically an au because the boys were never ghosts, but that isn't really something that is addressed or is needed to be known. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own any italicized lyrics or the Julie and the Phantoms characters. I'm also not the first person to write a breakup fic.

_I watched a TED Talk on heartbreak_

_He had a smart person accent_

_He said, "Don't look through the photos"_

_Then I looked through our photos_

Luke doesn't even know how he does it. How he resists looking through the camera gallery on his phone, the memories documented in photos. How when his heart is pulling itself apart he resists looking at the very things that could sew it back and then tear it apart again. 

Luke does know a few things. He knows the post-breakup rules. He's watched a TedTalk, the man speaking with an accent that he knows that she would've loved. And he's already breaking them.

One.

He knows that he isn't supposed to look at the photos. He puts his phone in the car, pretends like it is just a normal day. He lasts two hours. Two hours spent staring blankly at the wall, wondering where they went wrong. He knows, he knows. Two hours and then he breaks. He unlocks his phone and pulls up the photos, the videos, all of what they recorded. Their history was in front of the camera, well-documented and heart-breaking. He lasts two hours and he breaks his first rule.

Two. 

He knows that he's not supposed to think about her, to not let himself wallow in his self-pity. But it's hard. It's hard to block her from his mind when their apartment, his apartment, feels like her. Everything reminds her of him.

He will see the wilting dahlias on the counter, their petals falling to the marble. His last-ditch effort, when words failed and he just wasn't enough. Yet he can't bring himself to get rid of them, to finally toss them into the trash. He sees the looks that his friends shoot them when they come over to make sure that he isn't dead. He lets the blossoms rot just like what was supposed to be his great love. 

He will see the empty drawers on the other side of their (cross this out) his bedroom and he will remember. It will all come flooding back to him, of how she tore through like a hurricane, pulling clothes out of hidden places and taking it all. She left him nothing, in a million pieces, with nothing left to pull himself together again. 

But no, that's not true. He will see a shirt that she forgot, lying alone in a closet. It still smells like her. It's from their first tour, when they were still fumbling teenagers, sneaking glances at each other and pretending like they didn't see the chemistry between them. What he would give to go back to that time, when they were still young. It becomes stained with tears. 

He breaks all the rules that he put into place for himself, watching his face in the mirror when he breaks. 

  
  


_I'm tempted to distract myself_

_I'm trying not to_

_Cuz I'll make myself feel all of this_

_If it's all that I got left of you_

He debates whether or not he should drown out his sorrows with noise. To fill his days with as many activities as he can, leave no time for his brain to reflect. But his pain is all that he has left of her. All that he has are his wilting memories and his rotting heart. 

When the pain goes away she will be gone forever. He will only have half-concocted dreams and plans that have holes as gaping as their bond. He will only have her from the eyes of others, never through the intimate lens of knowing someone so wholly that you know them better than they know themselves.

He will never have a connection that deep, not when they both brought each other back from the brink. He will never love like that again, never be loved like that again. It breaks him.

He takes his pain and he keeps it close to him, his last bitter remnants of something so good.

  
  


_You came to Portugal in 2014_

_Just to spend a couple days with me_

_You flew halfway 'round the world for me_

It's a week after she left that he thinks about how they got there. How they got to the point of breaking. He skirts around the bad memories, the ones that he sees now climbing the stairs to the final plateau. He doesn't want to feel the pain but maybe happy memories will make it worse. He doesn't care.

He thinks about a time where everything felt high, long before everything dipped so low. He thinks about a time that he was in Portugal, for a reason that he can't even remember now. He knows what she was doing, shooting her first movie halfway around the world. He remembers how it felt to be apart from her that long, and he remembers how he vowed to never do it again. 

She flew half-way around the world just to see him, to make good memories. He remembers the way that her eyes crinkled at the corners when she got off the plane, her smile growing and growing. He remembers the way that he rushed to her, the way that they felt like two puzzle pieces clicking back together as cameras flashed around them. 

That separation was only temporary. Now they made the final cut, he broke his promise. They closed the pages of their book, snuffed out their flame. They lost the pieces of their puzzle. He remembers the times when they burned bright, feeling like they would never go down. What he would give to go back. 

_I swear I'm knocking out the next guy_

_Who says, "At least you'll get some breakup songs"_

_'Cause it ain't nearly been enough time_

He loves all of the fans. Those that knew him from Sunset Curve and those that found him through Julie and the Phantoms. He loves them, he really does, but sometimes it gets to be too much. 

They were public with their relationship, and that only made it so much harder when it came crashing down. Julie and the Phantoms broke up. There was nothing that they could do about that, when it was impossible for the two of them to be in the same place without a shouting match, words being hurled like daggers back and forth. And Reggie didn't need that. 

So they had to tell the fans, a bland statement crafted by PR that they posted to Instagram. And then they went silent. They refused to say anything, and the two biggest stars in the music industry dropped off the face of the planet. 

Even though he wasn't speaking, it didn't mean that he wasn't listening. He read the comments, saw the direct messages, fans flooding him with praise and support. He appreciated some of it, but some of it only hurt. The messages about songs were his least favorite. 

He didn't want to write songs about her, at least not now. Not when the wounds are still bleeding fresh. Not when his heart still beats for her. Not when he hasn't moved on. 

They promised each other, when they first started, that they wouldn't write sad songs about each other, at least not at first. They also promised to never leave each other. He is a man of broken promises.

He ignores everyone who says things about breakup songs, even as he listens to a playlist full of them. His Spotify knows him too well. He starts crafting lyrics in his head. 

For two weeks, he is silent. No notes slip from his lips, from his fingers. No music comes out of him. He only lasts two weeks. Music comes pouring out of him, lyrics in chicken-scratch inscribed onto paper. 

The music is personal, painful, not for him to sing in public. It's not for the band, not for whatever solo album his record label wants him to put out. It's been so long since he's written music just for himself, not because someone told him to. He imagines her doing the same thing, her curls hiding the paper from view. He remembers how she bit her lip while thinking about a song lyric, how she looked up through her eyes lashes when she asked him what he thought.

He remembers it all and he turns it into a song. He sings it to himself and it doesn't make him feel any better, but it's a start.

It's a start down the path of healing, the start of his wounds knitting together. It's a start as he sings himself to sleep, tears collecting in his eyes.

_It's hard to summarize three years_

_More like four years_

_Depends where you start counting_

_It don't matter_

He doesn't know when they first started. He doubts that she knew either. 

If he goes from when they first met, their story starts a lot differently. 

She was sixteen, he was seventeen. They were young and naive and bright and starry-eyed. They were two chemicals mixed together in the same beaker, begging to combust. They had a chemistry that they couldn't deny, that everyone could see. They were so high, floating on the clouds. They were performing and they were singing and they were friends. 

If he goes from when they became something else, the story changes again.

She was seventeen, he was eighteen. They had been a band for a year, been playing and writing and singing for a year. The time flew by, each day long and full and good. They were so, so good. They finally gave in to the chemistry, let themselves combine and combust.

Their first kiss was electric, the start of something new. Something new grew and twisted between them, green and young and alive.

They lasted for three years like that. For three years, everything was happy. For three years it felt like nothing could ever pull them down from the sky. They were young and they thought that they would be together forever.

She was twenty, he was twenty-one. He could tell that they were heading down the road of breaking. And he knew that she knew and that the band knew. 

It was in the glances that used to be light and were now just dark. It was in the songs that used to be perfect harmonies and were now dissonance. It was in the shows that used to be played smoothly and now were peppered with mistakes. They gave each other so many signs. 

The signs were what saved them in the end. The signs were what prevented the massive blowout, instead letting them down into a field of heartbreak gently. The signs let them leave each other silently, quiet tears and half-baked apologies.

  
  


_My friends are making sure I don't see you_

_I strategize a path to the bathroom_

_So I don't walk past you_

He knows that they put Alex and Reggie in an awkward spot. He knows that they are still friends with her, how could they not be, when she is who she is.

He sees the texts when he takes their phones for some silly reason, feels the pang in his heart when he sees Jules 💗. 

It takes seven months until the two of them are in the same place at the same time. It's some awards show, where he can check out and people watch, not up for any trophies or shiny things.

It's all going well until he hears her name be called, sees her walk up onto the stage. It's the first time that he's seen her, really seen her. Whenever she comes up on the tv or his phone he always swipes away, hiding from it. He doesn't know what she's winning (he is a liar) and he doesn't care (liar, liar).

She looks stunning and it hurts because he knows that she isn't thinking about him as much as he is thinking about her. She talks and she smiles and she laughs on stage until he can't take it anymore.

He can't take it and he feels himself spiraling. He plots his way to the restroom, making sure he doesn't pass her or any of their old friends. He knows that the paparazzi are snapping photos of his face, of the way that he flees instead of confronting his emotions. He doesn't care, in the moment, what they get. They will get him, his raw version, not the polished PR perfect version. Good. Let the world see someone in pain.

He hides in the bathroom for the rest of the show, until he can't anymore, and then he leaves. They are screaming out his name, cameras blinding him as he rushes to his car. He ignores them all. He turns his phone off, makes the driver drive in silence, the only sounds his breathing. He almost breaks down there again, not the first time that he would've cried in a car. But he pulls it together, catching the eye of the driver in the mirror.

When he is at his apartment that still feels too big and too quiet, even all these months later, he has texts from Alex and Reggie. He responds and he catches the Daily Mail already reporting on his abrupt exit. They get everything wrong and he's not sure how much more of it he can bear. 

_You leave before the concert is finished_

It takes a year before he is ready to perform again. If he knew that their last performance together was going to be their final goodbye on the stage, he wonders if he would have done it differently. He wonders and it eats at him but he pushes through. He swims through the acid to the other side. 

It's not a proper concert, more of an opening act than the main show, but it's something. It's a step in the right direction. And she just happens to be there. He wasn't warned, he wasn't given a sign. He wanted one, so he could have prepared himself to look at her. When she looks so happy, her arm slung around Flynn.

And he knows that she doesn't know that he is here, because otherwise there would be sour lemon puckered lips on what is a sweet lemonade smile. He knows because otherwise, she wouldn't be here. 

He only has a few songs, classic covers chosen by his PR team. It feels like they choose everything that he does now, they monitor his every move. He wants to be raw, to be honest. He is not a perfect man. 

He gets up on stage. She isn't looking at him, still hasn't glanced his way. Flynn sees him, and she gives him a bittersweet smile. 

He starts singing. It feels like him but not, the backing band roaring to life. It's so different from performing with Julie and the Phantoms, as he sees her recognize his voice and turn around. He sees her smile drop and he feels his heart break again. She watches him and he feels like his body is collapsing. But he keeps going, keeps singing, just like she did, just like they did right before the end. 

There's one song left when he makes his decision. What comes out of his mouth is not the pop-punk song that his PR picked out for him. It’s a song that he listened to all those months ago, in the aftermath of the tragedy. He watches her face as the lyrics pour out of him, watches her leave before he is finished.

_Because they can’t even be in the same room._


	2. A Soulmate Who Wasn't Meant To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie and how her relationship fell apart. 
> 
> Title and lyrics from A Soulmate Who Wasn't Meant to Be by Jess Benko.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm so sorry for the delay in this chapter being posted, I had some massive writer's block with this story. This chapter is also a little shorter, but I still like it. Also I was editing this while watching a pirates of the Caribbean movie and I may have been slightly distracted by kiera knightly so there may be mistakes. 
> 
> As always, I do not own the lyrics or the characters!

_I never should have called_   
_'Cause I knew you would leave me_   
_But I didn't think you could do it so easily_

Julie doesn't know how he does it. She doesn't know how he appears to move on like nothing happened, like their time together meant nothing. It's like she faded into a phantom for him, and then she crossed over. It's like she was just a whisper in his mind, a figment of his imagination, never real, never there.

But the ghost of him follows her around. He is a permanent stain on her mind, a line of ink tattooed directly onto her brain. She lets him keep the apartment, she lets him keep their former home. She doesn't think that she can live somewhere where they had made so many memories together. She doesn't think that she can live where they had spent their final moments, their final remnants of brightness. She doesn't know how he does that either.

She thinks back to their first year, their first few weeks, those first precious days at the start of what they thought was forever. She thinks back to the call that she made, at sixteen years old, that started a path to what she thought was forever.

She was young and she was innocent and so full of passion for music, for life, for the way that she simply had to breathe for music to pour out of her. She had just gotten her music back, she had just gotten back up onto a stage and sung. A band from nowhere, a girl who was lost, they made the perfect combination.

So she picked up the phone and she made the call that started her on her road, the road to fame and love and loss and heartbreak.   
  


_I never should have held your hand_   
_On that cold rainy night_   
_'Cause, further along, it would cause another fight_

They went on tour and it was one of the best things that she had done in her entire life. They went on tour once she's eighteen, and she couldn't believe that it was the path that she had been walking down. It felt surreal, a fever dream that had gone on longer than it should have. But it was real. It was real and it was tangible and she had to pinch herself sometimes to make sure that she wasn't dreaming.

As good as the tour was, there were still bad days. Days where she had to fake a smile on stage while her skin was coated slick with sweat, her teeth gritted together whenever she turned around. Days where her body wanted to shut down but she forced herself to get out of bed and get up on the stage.

It was one of those days when he found her on the roof. Sitting on the top of their hotel, staring out at the smoky line of the city that their concert was in, she lost herself in the thoughts that swirled around her head. Clouds gathered on the horizon, dark and puffy. She knew that they were storm clouds, that she should head inside and get away from the weather, but she couldn't bring herself to move.

It was freeing, leaning on the railing, watching the storm roll in. She could see the lights of the buildings flickering on and off as people woke up and went to bed, the late-night creeping into the early hours of the morning.

He found her there as the first droplets splattered onto her face. "Hey," he said, nudging her gently with his hip.

It was odd to see him like this, calmed down and half-asleep after the intense energy of their show. During a show, he was a human fireball. He bounced and he ran across the stage, using the elation from the crowd to fuel him. On stage, he was unapproachable, god-like. He's sent from above to grace their presence, to be fawned over.

But upon the roof, he felt more like a puppy dog personified as a person. Upon the roof, he's human, he's vulnerable. He's a boy that she can reach her hand out to, a boy that she can lace her fingers through with.

They hold hands as the rain splatters down on them, they hold hands as the night turns into day.

And if the night gets bitterly brought up in one of their later fights, then she chooses to ignore it. She ignores it until she can't, when all that she can do is think about it.

She ignored it until she is examining their relationship, trying to figure out where their descent began. She didn't think that it was that night, even if her heart broke into two when she thinks about it.   
  


_Kissed your hand_   
_I am under your control_   
_I will never understand_   
_I never should have said_   
_"I love you"_

Some of the old days, those days where everything felt so good, felt like dreams to her.

Dreams that could only go on so long, dreams that eventually faded into things that kept her up at night.

The first days after they broke up was a time that she tried to forget.

Those were the days where he still had a hold on her, the days where she still felt like she was under his control. She doesn't understand how she let herself fall so far. She doesn't understand why her heart still longs for him even as her mind is screaming no.

And she wrote. For better or worse, she poured her heart out onto those pages. She wrote down every thought that she had, every feeling of heartbreak that consumed her. He always said that they made a deal, that they made a pact that they wouldn't write breakup songs about each other. But that had been him, not her. She had never agreed to it, never written down her name on the dotted line. And she knew that eventually, he would break his promise too.

She never should have told him that she loved her. It would have saved her from so much hurt, would have protected her from so much pain.

She told him that she loved him on a rooftop, hidden away from the world. She told him that she loved him in Portugal, when she flew out to see him. She told him that she loved him when he whispered it back to her, soft and gentle. She told him that she loved him in the back of a stage, right before they were going to perform.

She told him that she loved him for the last time before she left him.

_Stranger, who knows all my secrets_   
_Can pull me apart and break my heart_

They used to know everything about each other. They used to know each other inside and out, front to back. They aren't like that anymore. He knew how to break her, how to shatter her into a million pieces. He knew how to pull the carefully constructed public image that she had apart. That was the past. She is a different person now.

She wonders if he still remembers all of her whispered secrets, the things that she held close to her heart, or if he burned those pages in his mind. She wonders if he tore them out and shredded them into pieces.

He certainly kept them up until the final days, when they were sticks thrown onto brilliantly burning flames. She wonders just what was the flint that sparked it, and what let them burn down. She wonders if it was her.

She let the flames go out, then she leaves. She lets him stew in silence, with all of her secrets. She lets him sit in the pain, as she does far away in a house that doesn't feel like home. (Maybe it's because he isn't there, maybe it's because she's tired and lonely. She doesn't know if there's a difference.)

And as the years pass, his secrets fade from her mind. They fade and they burn out, the ink leeching from the pages. She hopes that her secrets do the same in him, fluttering off into the silent night.  
  
  


_Wish I could go back to the day we met and leave you be_   
_Sit and look pretty_

Some days she wishes that she had never joined the band. Wishes that she had kept along the set-out path for her, outlined by guidance counselors and school administrators galore. Wishes that her father had never said yes, that Flynn had never encouraged her, that her mother never whispered sweet words of praise to her so long ago.

But then she thinks about all that she gained, all that she would have never gotten to experience if the band hadn't existed. There would be no Grammy, there would be none of the magical moments that had made it all worth it. She never would have met the fans, never would have grown a community that backed her with no hesitation.

She never would have been able to reconnect with the spirit of her mom. She never would have made friends out of Alex and Reggie. There are so many things that she would have missed out on.

She is twenty-one when she figures out that you can have both the good and the bad. Twenty-one was so young, too young to have already loved and have lost the great love of her life. So she decides to not let it define her. She decided to put it behind her. She ignores every interview question asked about him, blocks him on every form of social media.

She sits still in her room some nights and she thinks, she really thinks. The press would have a field day if they saw her thoughts, if they even saw her then. She could imagine the headlines plastered everywhere. The thinking pulls her deep down, but it also catapults her away from her past into the future. She likes that. She likes it and she does it, every thought distancing herself from him.  
  


_Stranger, that's all I see_   
_When I look into your eyes_

The first time that she comes face to face with him for longer than a few seconds is a year and a half after they broke up. It's at an after-party of all places, when she's had maybe one too many drinks.

She stumbles into him, her eyes unfocused and her vision blurry, and she drinks in the sight of him. But it's not the boy that she loved that stands in front of her. It's a stranger that she sees as she looks into the pools of light that his eyes are.

She wonders what he sees, when he looks at her. She hopes that he sees a girl that's flourishing in her own world. She hopes that she makes him feel something, when she smiles at him.

Looking at him in the dim light of the party, she only sees a stranger.   
  


_A soulmate who wasn't meant to be_

Maybe if they had met at a different time, maybe if they had met under different circumstances, maybe then it would have worked out. The world had thought that they were soulmates, lovers destined by the universe to be together.

She sometimes wonders if that was a factor in their downfall. If the way that they thought that they had forever stretched in front of them helped them climb into the deep.

Maybe they really were soulmates. There are so many questions that she has for the world that she will never get answered, but she has to learn to live with it.

Maybe they were the right people for each other. Maybe they were destined but something tore them apart.

Julie Molina and Luke Patterson were puzzle pieces placed by the universe. They could click together, sealed tight, but it always seemed like something was just slightly off. The universe had bent their edges up, plopping them in places where they weren't compatible.

_Soulmates that weren't meant to be_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment if you want!

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! Authors survive off of comments.
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr! [my tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nicolewithasoul)


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